


Light Dark Life Death

by TrashMachine



Series: Don't get your thoughts and actions possessed by the disney demon [4]
Category: Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure (Cartoon)
Genre: implied gore kinda?, just watch out, varian is losin it™
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-24
Updated: 2019-08-24
Packaged: 2020-09-25 01:50:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20368672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrashMachine/pseuds/TrashMachine
Summary: It hurts. It hurts and he is afraid.It hurts, and she is more afraid than he is.





	Light Dark Life Death

It’s agony.

What’s agony, is the first question that comes to mind. He doesn’t know what’s happening, or why it hurts, but it does. It pulses through the palm of his hand- the right hand, the exposed hand, the one he touched the one this all started with -through his veins, winding up his arm, over his body until it settles in his heart and the organ throbs and pulses and threatens to explode.

He breathes and he twists and it feels good somehow- but the horrific snapping and crunching he can hear tells him it isn’t. Something- something loud, something at home. It whispers in his head, yes, yes yes yes, and he welcomes it, it covers his skin and wraps around him like a warm embrace. It leaves his face and he’s grateful because he does need to breathe and he does need to eat and he doesn’t have to see and hear but he’d much rather remain able to.

It’s impaled him through the stomach, he realises. It’s impaled him, and it’s crawling over him inside and out. Tiny pricks of needle like stones have settled in his muscles and sinew and bones and skin and it is agony.

But he doesn’t care.

There’s power within power within power within power within power within power within a poorly made vessel. He’s not adjusting well to being welcomed back, to being reconnected, to being torn apart so he fits back together. His hands are covered, his vision is strange, dark but so bright so covered and spread, and the beast, but the beast in his head, he is quiet. Why would he be quiet? Is this important? It must be, he thinks, because his hair glows blue and white and sings to him in words he doesn’t know and a language he doesn’t speak.

He whimpers. He moans, groans, gasps, and he crawls forward. It hurts, but it hurts good. In a way that feels right, stretched into the right shape and bent to be what he should. His new claws scratch pathetically at stone as he reaches, searches, for the other half.

He is one half, now. He wasn’t before. He was an eighth, or maybe a sixteenth. He was small but it clung to him and is made itself at home and it searched. It searches still- he searches still. He has found his other pieces to his half. Now he must find the other. 

Light. He is searching for light. His vision is darkness but shapes and constructs of green and black and grey but there, there she is, glowing and radiant. She is gold, the only gold here and she is light. White gold shining pure, light contained, bottled, a drop, life, breathing and gasping. Light. She is light. He knew this, but he didn’t know he needed her before. Didn’t know he needed the light.

His light, her light, our light, he thinks, or maybe he says it but it doesn’t matter because it all hurts and the light, the sun is within grasp.

“Sundrop,” he whispers, because he knows he says it this time and he says it like it’s the only word he knows. “Sunlight, light, my light, my shining star, my flower.”

“No,” she says, in the voice that he recognises as afraid. He has heard it enough. He caused it, once, twice, three four- too many times, too much fear, too much hurt. He feels lightheaded. “No, no.”

“Please,” he tries again, eyes wide as he reaches for her. “Light, Sun, Sol, Day, Helios, Ra, Apollo Solaris Star Stella Luminous Aurora.”

He knows all these names for her, yet she still refuses him. He cries. He cries because the light has been separate from him for so long and she is right there, right there in front of them so close and right there, and she still won’t rejoin him.

She is afraid. He knows this. They know this. He knows, they know, she know, everyone. Knows. But he cannot fix it. Half dead half alive half alone. She is so. So. Close.

“Please,” he says, and uses her chosen name. “Rapunzel.”

—

Varian touched the stone.

Rapunzel saw the look in his eyes before he did. He looked mad, deranged. But sad, and desperate. He’d looked that way before, and to this day the very concept scared her. But he touched the stone, the stone no one should touch, and it sank into his skin.

She watched- had to watch, because there was nothing she could do -as his body convulsed. Bones broke and set and broke again in place and the magic inside him visibly swam and twisted in his veins, his muscles and the space in between. It looked like it hurt. But if it did, Varian was too breathless to voice it. 

He was limp. And the magic threw him like a child with a broken toy. Black stone pierced out from inside his flesh and covered it, coiled around his reset bones and solidified over his skin like armour. There was no blood. The blue shining light of the stone sat still suddenly where his heart was, like it had found a purpose in its path of ruining the body given to it. 

Strands of blue spread from his scalp over the black, colouring his hair, causing it to glow. Then white replaced the original strand of blue. The whites of his eyes turned black, his pupils were lost to his iris, shining, bright and blue, staring blank and wide. His body still effected by the corruption of Zhan Tiri, now twisted by the moon drop as it made itself home inside him. 

He fell to the ground. 

At first she thought he might have died. But he flinched on the ground, and from his throat came a gargling, unsettling noise she hoped he would never make again. He whimpered, softly. Like it was a noise he never intended to let it escape. Then he moaned. It might have been pain, or maybe relief. The transformation had finished, it seemed. The horns remained on his head, and his teeth remained too sharp. He was like the sea, the moon. Dark, dangerous, ominous. 

One hand lifted from the ground, then slammed down. Nails, claws, curl and scrape against the stone. His arm pulses, twitches, and presses to lift his body from the ground. His throat is so hoarse that he croaks with a breath.

One eye fixates on her. He whispers, “Light.” 

His body moves with new purpose. Limbs unable to work together as he tries to move towards her, arms outstretched and breaths desperate.

“Light,” he groans, he croaks, he wheezes. “My light our light her… light.”

She doesn’t know what to do. It’s Varian’s voice. One of the few things Zhan Tiri can’t do.

“Sundrop,” he whispers, and she flinches. She doesn’t know what’s wrong, she doesn’t know how to fix it. She wonders if this really is her fault. Was there nothing she could have done before this, or was that a lie she told herself to lessen her guilt? “Sunlight, light, my light, my shining star, my flower.”

The last one makes her flinch. Gothel called her ‘my flower’. Gothel used her magic. She doesn’t want to think of Gothel, not now, not when she is faced with the same decision. Someone she loved, who has betrayed her trust, is close to death because of magic. What if she has to kill Varian? What if she has to, unlike before, when Gothel fell and Rapunzel just wasn’t fast enough to catch her? When Gothel’s age turned her to dust?

Varian isn’t turning to dust. Varian might just be dying.

“No,” she says, before she can realise she said it. She says it again, if only to make it real. It won’t be happening again, Varian isn’t Gothel. Varian isn’t evil. Varian is just hurt, and upset, and betrayed. And desperate. He’s not going to die. She can’t let him “No, no.”

He realises this, to some degree, because he stops calling her by those names. “Please,” he says. His hand is outstretched and shaking with need, with poorly concealed panic. “Light, Sun, Sol, Day, Helios, Ra, Apollo Solaris Star Stella Luminous Aurora.”

Those aren’t her names, but they could be. She shakes her head. She can’t give into this Varian. This isn’t him, and if there’s a way to save him it isn’t to do… whatever he wants. Something’s wrong, and every part of her knows it.

She does want to. For two reasons. She wants to help him, to comfort him. She wants the stone, too. She needs the stone and he’s right there but she can’t. 

“Please,” he says, and uses her chosen name. “Rapunzel.”

She makes her choice. It’s the only one she has.

—

She runs. She runs from him. He wails, he reaches for her, he screams. No, no, please, come back, don’t leave him. Not again, don’t leave him again.

She disappears from his sight. He screams, and cries, and wails, and reaches for her as if she’ll come back. When his voice breaks and rattles to nothingness, the voice in his head comes back, soothing and seductive as ever. He calms at its presence. He clings to the only person left to him.

“Relax,” he coos as he takes over. Varian lets him. It feels better to sleep. “Relax, little moonstone. You can find her again. We can find her again. Don’t you worry.”

He soothes and pets Varian within his own mind, and he whimpers. He wants his other half, needs her. The light he must reflect is so far away.

“We’ll get her,” the beast reassures. “Don’t you worry. We’ll get her.”


End file.
